Georgia Championship Wrestling - November 14, 1981
by Dick Bourne Mid-Atlantic Gateway
Back in the territory days, Saturday was the primary (and often the only) day for wrestling in every territory in the United States.
YouTube user "KrisZ891979" uploaded some great Georgia wrestling from 1980 and 1981awhile back, including some complete shows from the fall of 1981 like this pristine video of the entire November 14, 1981 program that aired at 6:05 on WTBS.
Reigning Mid-Atlantic Heavyweight Champion Roddy Piper had joined Gordon Solie as co-host of the program two weeks earlier, and the two became quite a broadcast combination over the next year. Piper was the perfect cocky-heel counter to Solie's dry, straight-forward approach and the two meshed really well in an unconventional way, especially for those times.
PART NINE
Ole Anderson was booking both the Mid-Atlantic and Georgia territories at the time, and one result was a sharing of talent between the two groups. In particular on this program:
Mid-Atlantic Champion Roddy Piper, who is never acknowledged as such by Solie or Piper, but is acknowledged by Ivan Koloff as Mid-Atlantic champ in an interview on the program
NWA TV champion Ivan Koloff, carrying his championship belt and announcing his intention in defending the title in Georgia. (The title was a Crockett title)
Mid-Atlantic Tag Team champions Chris Markoff and Nikolia Volkoff (managed by Lord Alfred Hayes) are seen on the program in a tape from the Knoxville "NWA Championship Wrestling" program hosted by Les Thatcher. The team would be wrestling in the annual Thanksgiving tag team tournament at the Omni in Atlanta a few weeks later. The Knoxville office was closely affiliated with Jim Crockett Promotions at the time and used a number of pieces of talent from the Charlotte office.
Ray Stevens, currently a top heel for the Crocketts and an occasional tag team partner of Ole Anderson's
and of course Ole Anderson himself, who along with his brother Gene, were the reigning NWA World Tag Team champions, primarily a Crockett area title.
That made for a total four Crockett Promotions champions appearing in one way or another on this Georgia program. Throw in Mid-Atlantic star Ric Flair, who had just recently won the NWA World Championship from Dusty Rhodes, and it's fair to say their was more than a small Mid-Atlantic influence on the Georgia promotion at the time. Flair is not on this program, but had been on almost every Georgia show since winning the title, and would be on the week following this one as well.
This Georgia show is loaded with a lot of great talent that were hallmarks of the Georgia Championship Wrestling promotion at the time including Tommy "Wildfire" Rich, Mr. Wrestling II, the Masked Superstar, Bob and Brad Armstrong, Austin Idol, Michael Hayes, Terry Gordy, Mike Jackson, and others.
Mid-Atlantic Wrestling was and always will be my first love, but Georgia Wrestling during this time was on fire, and was a fun part of every Saturday as well.
Edited from a post originally published October 2016 on the Mid-Atlantic Gateway.
Time to take a look back at Georgia wrestling in 1982 and a match between a Mid-Atlantic superstar and a young kid who would one day become a superstar himself.
It
was the first Georgia wrestling show of 1982, and current Mid-Atlantic star Paul Jones
was making the second of two guest shots on "Georgia Championship
Wrestling" for booker Ole Anderson, who was booking both the Georgia and
Mid-Atlantic territories at that time.
What is more notable from a historical perspective about Jones's appearance, however, was his opponent on this show. His name was Jim Vertaroso and host Gordon Solie billed him as a power-lifting champion out of Rome, GA. What you will see is a big guy who is pretty green in the ring, but shows great promise. The longer you watch though, you will notice that the young man in the ring with Paul Jones is the future Arn Anderson. (Arn's appearance is at 12:54 in this video.)
We believe this was the week after Arn's television debut and may have been his first singles match. (Edit: Arn mentions on the debut episode of his podcast "ARN" that his recollection was his first appearance on Georgia TV was in a tag team match with partner Zeke Rivers against Bob and Brad Armstrong which aired 12/26/81.)
Virtaroso (and we're assuming that's how he would spell it) would later wrestle under his real name Marty Lunde in Southeastern, Mid-South, and Georgia, before Ole Anderson gave him the name Arn Anderson when he came back to work for him in Georgia in 1983.
Arn's look here in early 1982 is quite different as he is much heavier and with that big '70s looking mustache. In fact, he looks a lot like his son brock now who is learning the ropes in AEW. Who knew watching this show just after the New Year's celebrations were over that they were seeing a future superstar and Hall of Famer in action against "No. 1" Paul Jones.
The match with Paul Jones vs. Jim Virtaroso (Arn Anderson) is at 12:54 in this video.
The show features co-host Roddy Piper with Gordon Solie, and also includes The Masked Superstar and the Super Destroyer, Dick Slater, Stan Hansen, Dory Funk, Jr. and Terry Funk, Tommy Rich, Buzz Sawyer, Mike Jackson, and many others.
Plus, fellow belt-enthusiasts will enjoy the presentation of new National tag team title belts to reigning champions Bob and Brad Armstrong at the opening of the show.
Edited from a post originally published October of 2016 on the Mid-Atlantic Gateway Thanks to Kyle Rosser for additional information.
On May 17, 1981 at the Omni in Atlanta, there was a one-night tournament for the vacated Georgia Heavyweight Championship. Ten men were entered in the tournament, including a couple of guys advertised as coming in from outside the territory to compete including Bruiser Brody and Greg Valentine.
Brody no-showed (or perhaps was never really going to appear to begin with, who knows) but Valentine came in from the Mid-Atlantic area and went all the way to the finals, defeating Mr. Wrestling II in the quarter finals and Iron Mike Sharpe in the semi-finals before losing to "Wildfire" Tommy Rich in the finals.
Prior to the tournament, Greg Valentine sent in a taped interview from Raleigh to promote his appearance in the tournament. The interview was conducted by Rich Landrum (host of "World Wide Wrestling") in the studios of WRAL TV.
The video below, which is the final seven minutes of the Georgia TV show leading up to that big Omni card, contains the Greg Valentine promo plus another tape from the Mid-Atlantic area featuring the reigning NWA World Tag Team champions Gene and Ole Anderson.
(No idea why the person who posted this clip labeled it from "WGHP-TV High Point Fox 8..." because the clip has nothing to do with any of that.)
GENERAL NOTES
The match with the Anderson Brothers from WRAL is from the summer of 1981 and is from "Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling" with Bob Caudle and Lord Alfred Hayes calling the action.
Tommy Rich was wrestling in that tournament with a $10,000 bounty on his head, allegedly placed there by NWA World Champion Harley Race, who was trying to avoid having to face Rich for the NWA title. Greg Valentine mentions being interested in collecting the bounty in his promo, but was apparently unable to do so as Rich defeated him in the tournament finals to win the Georgia title and then went on to challenge Race for the NWA title at the next show at the Omni on 5/31/81. Race would successfully defend against Rich on 5/31, but then lost the NWA world title to Dusty Rhodes on the following Omni show on 6/21/81.
If you look closely, you will see part of the Georgia championship belt extending off the front of Gordon Solie's podium.
In a Studio Wrestling note, the backdrop you see in the Valentine interview (as seen in the image at top) was the Mid-Atlantic set used from 1975-1977 and is my favorite of all the old sets, mainly because it was first one I really remember and was used during the years I first really loved wrestling.
This Georgia Championship Wrestling show featured two other Mid-Atlantic clips not seen in the video above. The first featured a match between Greg Valentine and Steve Muslin from 1980 on "Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling." The second was a promotional interview similar to Greg Valentine's with Rich Landrum interviewing "The Dream." (I hope to present those in a future post.)
GEORGIA TOURNAMENT NOTES
Gordon Solie promoted the tournament as a round-robin tournament, although it was not competed in such a fashion. There were 10 men announced as appearing in the tournament: Dusty Rhodes, Iron Mike Sharpe, Mr. Wrestling II, Tommy Rich, Ray Candy, Bruiser Brody, Greg Valentine, Ken Patera, Mike Boyer, and Bill Irwin. Brody and Boyer diod not appear, but Nickolia Volkoff and Jim Duggan replaced them.
From the tournament results posted on The History of the WWE website, it appears that 2 of the 10 (Rhodes and Volkoff) received byes, but I've been unable to figure out the elimination brackets from these results. But they are listed as:
Quarter Finals: Tommy Rich defeated Bill Irwin
Quarter Finals: Ken Patera defeated Ray Candy
Quarter Finals: Greg Valentine defeated Mr. Wrestling #2
Quarter Finals: Iron Mike Sharpe defeated Jim Duggan
Semi Finals: Ken Patera fought Dusty Rhodes to a no contest
Semi Finals: Tommy Rich defeated Nikolai Volkoff
Semi Finals: Greg Valentine defeated Iron Mike Sharpe
Finals: Tommy Rich defeated Greg Valentine to win the title
Originally posted November 2016 on the Mid-Atlantic Gateway.
The recent spate of excellent quality uploads of old "Georgia Championship Wrestling" shows on YouTube had me fondly remembering Roddy Piper's one-year stint in Georgia and particularly his early feud with "Bullet" Bob Armstrong.
In the fall of 1981, Ole Anderson became booker for both the Mid-Atlantic and Georgia territories, something pretty unheard of in that time. One result of his having that dual responsibility was the cross-over of talent between the two promotions. This was yet another chapter in the long history of what I have dubbed the "talent exchange" or partnership between the Mid-Atlantic and Georgia territories that went back to the mid-1970s.
Gordon Solie and Roddy Piper, hosts of
"Georgia Championship Wrestling" on SuperStation WTBS
One of the most visible examples of this was Roddy Piper becoming the co-host of "Georgia Championship Wrestling" alongside Gordon Solie in late October of 1981. Piper proved to be the perfect bombastic and colorful compliment to Solie's rather dry style of calling matches. It's not clear what Solie must have first thought of Piper when he debuted alongside him on WTBS on Halloween evening of 1981, but after a few weeks he warmed up to him pretty quickly as there was great chemistry between the two and they became one of the top pro wrestling broadcasting duos in the country with broad exposure on the nationally televised Georgia program.
Piper was such a hit in the color commentary role that Ole Anderson also paired him with Bob Caudle on "Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling" a few months later. Piper was perhaps the only wrestler to ever be a color commentator on two top shows for two different promotions at the same time. It was this experience that would first get him noticed in that role and would later serve as a foundation for the groundbreaking "Piper's Pit" segments on WWF television shows in 1984.
Bob and Brad Armstrong
Along with his commentary duties in Georgia, Piper also would occasionally conduct interviews. In his first few months, he seemed particularly enamored of the father and son combination of Bob and Brad Armstrong, and his passive-aggressive confrontations with the two eventually led to fireworks between Piper and Bob Armstrong.
For several weeks in a row, Piper would interview the Armstrongs at ringside, complimenting the tag team prowess of the team, but also questioning their strategies and execution. He even went so far as to get personal with Bob, suggesting he was perhaps a bad father for occasionally letting his son take a beating in a match.
Bob, for his part, handled all of this masterfully in the slow build to the inevitable explosion with Piper, at first just just acting mildly annoyed at Piper's antics, usually brushing him off or ending the interviews before Piper was ready to end them, leaving the rowdy Scot occasionally flummoxed and at a loss for words.
Bob Armstrong was the perfect foil for Piper, aptly able to hold his own in a verbal joust with him, using his popular southern wit to confound the west coast bullying and arrogance of Piper. Armstrong was now looked at as one of the wise old veterans in the territory by the fans, and fans enjoyed watching Armstrong put Piper in his place over those early weeks.
But Piper was relentless. And as he turned the volume up on his criticism of the Armstrongs, it began to get under Bob Armstrong's skin. However, the two never touched for nearly three months.
That wild melee led to an actual match between the two at the Omni on Sunday, February 7. It was Piper's long awaited first match in Georgia and part of a big night at the Omni which included National Heavyweight Champion Tommy "Wildfire" Rich defend that title against former NWA world champion Harley Race.
There are different accounts as to the result of the February match. Most reports say it was a double DQ or a no-contest finish. The match would actually serve as a springboard to a progression of matches Piper would have over the next few months at the Omni, moving from one challenge up to the next. Following Armstrong, there was Tommy Rich and then Dick Slater. Others opponents down the line in 1982 for Piper included Dusty Rhodes, Ole Anderson, and Don Muraco.
Even though Piper moved on to other opponents in Atlanta, his feud with Bob Armstrong would continue outside the territory. Piper's only real role in Georgia was doing TV's with Gordon Solie on Saturday mornings, and matches on the Omni cards every three weeks or so. He didn't wrestle often on the house show circuit in Georgia because he was a full-time wrestler for Jim Crockett Promotions, and was actually booked out to Atlanta through the Charlotte Crockett office. In fact, through much of this time period Piper was Mid-Atlantic Heavyweight Champion, feuding first with Ricky Steamboat and then with Jack Brisco over that title belt.
THE PIPER/ARMSTRONG FEUD MOVES TO THE MID-ATLANTIC TERRITORY
Their feud was a quite unusual because it began in Georgia, but was largely carried out in the Mid-Atlantic territory, even though Armstrong never appeared in person on Mid-Atlantic television. The feud had incubated every Saturday on WTBS for nearly three months (November 1981 - January 1982) without the two ever touching.
Then soon after that one Atlanta match on 2/7/82, things moved directly to the Mid-Atlantic territory, where Piper was the reigning Mid-Atlantic Heavyweight Champion. But other than isolated matches in Norfolk and Greensboro, their war took place entirely in the city of Greenville, SC on Monday nights.
Over a two month period, beginning on February 22 and culminating on April 19, the two had five (5) different matches in the Greenville Memorial Auditorium.
2/22/82 - Mid-Atlantic title match (mid-card)
3/01/82 - No Disqualification match (semi-main)
3/22/82 - 2 out of 3 falls match (main event)
3/29/82 - Indian Strap match (main event)
4/19/82 - Canadian Lumberjack match (main event)
With Armstrong not appearing in person on any Mid-Atlantic TV shows, and only a few isolated clips shown from Georgia, it is astounding that Piper and Armstrong went for five events in Greenville, headlining the last three of them. it is a testament to the chemistry they had together and how well things clicked on the Georgia show, which was seen on cable channel WTBS in the Greenville market, although cable penetration in 1982 was far more limited than today.
Piper and Armstrong also headlined three shows in Cincinnati, OH, a city which featured talent from both Mid-Atlantic and Georgia promotions. The local promoter for the Cincy shows was Les Thatcher.
Piper and Armstrong also headlined three shows in Cincinnati, OH which were part of the Georgia Wrestling tours of Ohio and Michigan at that time. The local promoter for the Cincy shows was Les Thatcher, and lots of Mid-Atlantic talent was booked on those shows as well.
It was a wonderful feud and a great memory from that time where so much
talent was appearing in both territories simultaneously.
******
Thanks to Brian Rogers for his help with these Greenville newspaper clippings.
Originally posted October 30, 2016 on the Mid-Atlantic Gateway.
by Dick Bourne and Mark Eastridge Mid-Atlantic Gateway
PART FIVE
Paul Jones was a Mid-Atlantic Wrestling mainstay thought most of the decade of the 1970s, but spent time in Florida and Georgia, too, including several months in the Peach State in the spring and early summer of 1977.
As we continue our look at the talent exchange between the Mid-Atlantic and Georgia territories that year (first described here), we see that Jones was a big part on both ends of the deal. He first visited Georgia while a regular in the Mid-Atlantic, but also briefly came home to Charlotte while a regular in Georgia.
Jones was first a visitor to Augusta, Georgia (ground zero in Georgia of these exchanges) on 2/14/77 when he came in to face Gene Anderson on a card that also featured the Mid-Atlantic tag champs Jerry Brown and Buddy Roberts (the Hollywood Blondes) in to face Georgia champs Mr. Wrestling I & II. He subsequently moved to the Georgia territory full time until returning later that summer.
While Jones was away in Georgia, the feud between the Anderson Brothers and the championship team of Ric Flair and Greg Valentine reached yet another boiling point where the two teams met in a cage match for the NWA world tag team championships on 5/8 with Wahoo McDaniel assigned as the special referee. The match took place at the Charlotte Coliseum.
The Anderson Brothers regained the titles that night, but Flair and Valentine injured Ole Anderson after the match with a stuff-piledriver (rarely seen in that era) and were in the process of injuring Wahoo as well.
Out of nowhere, Paul Jones appeared at ringside and entered the cage to a huge surprise pop, coming ot the aid of his former partner and cleaning house of Flair and Valentine. The visual of Paul with his old partner Wahoo McDaniel standing side by side with the Anderson Brothers was a surreal scene for most Mid-Atlantic fans. The two teams had some of the most memorable matches ever over the tag titles during the years 1975 and 1976.
Add caption
Paul's appearance was a great surprise to the fans live in Charlotte. He hadn't been in the Mid-Atlantic area for months and was not advertised on that 5/8 Charlotte card, so fans had no idea he was even in the building.
We've included video from YouTube below of Paul making the save. The audio on this is somewhat muted, although I think you'll get the idea of how excited the crowd was to see Paul make that save. He had been a huge fan favorite in the area for years. My favorite part of this was the reaction of one fan seated near the 16mm camera filming this action. If you listen carefully, you can hear his excitement rise as Paul begins to clean house. "Oh my goodness! Oh my goodness!!" he says over and over. There was nothing quite like a surprise appearance by a big name back in the day when you weren't expecting it. Still isn't today.
Paul Jones followed up his surprise appearance on 5/8 in Charlotte with a scheduled match there the following Monday night 5/16 at the Park Center where he challenged Ric Flair for the Mid-Atlantic TV title. Paul defeated Flair, but only after the 15 minute time limit had expired where the TV title was on the line.
These were the only two known appearances in the Mid-Atlantic area by Jones during this time period, and the second one on 5/16 was his only announced appearance.
On a side note, this was the show the night before the mixed card in Augusta on Monday 5/9 that we reviewed last time (in Part Four of this series) where the local Sunday morning newspaper in Augusta gave away the result of Sunday night's title change in Charlotte before it had actually happened.
Enjoy this 16mm film footage of Paul Jones making the save in the cage in Charlotte.
Paul enters the cage at the 3:36 mark.
by Dick Bourne and Mark Eastridge Mid-Atlantic Gateway
For the third straight Monday night show in a row at the Bell Auditorium in Augusta, GA, Mid-Atlantic Wrestling regulars appeared on the card as part of a de facto Mid-Atlantic/Georgia talent exchange during the year 1977.
As we've discussed in 5 earlier installments in this series, full time wrestlers from both groups made appearances in each other's territories for one night special events. Augusta Georgia was "ground zero" for Georgia Championship Wrestling in this exchange.
On two different nights in the previous months, Georgia fan favorite Thunderbolt Patterson had travelled to the Mid-Atlantic area to team with Wahoo McDaniel. He had most recently joined the Chief on 4/30/77 in Hampton, VA to take on the NWA World Tag Team champions from Ric Flair and Greg Valentine. (See Part 2 of the series for more on Thunderbolt's many appearance for Jim Crockett Promotions in the spring of 1977.)
The two failed to take the belts in Hampton, but formed a very impressive combination that the fans really got behind. Two weeks later, on Monday 5/16 in Augusta, GA, Wahoo returned the favor to T-bolt and came to Georgia, as this popular combination received another chance at the World Tag Team titles, except this time from a different team.
A packed Bell Auditorium crowd saw Wahoo McDaniel come in for one night only to team with Thunderbolt to challenge the new World Tag Team champions Gene and Ole Anderson.
The Anderson Brothers had defeated Flair and Valentine for the titles a week and a day earlier, taking the titles on 5/8 in Charlotte, NC. (See Part 4 and Part 5 of this series for more on that historic night.) You will note that the article above from the Augusta newspaper mentions that the Andersons had regained the titles in Charlotte. What wasn't mentioned was that Wahoo McDaniel was the special referee in that match where the title changed hands. Even though Wahoo had found himself a strange ally to the Andersons in their battles with Flair in Valentine in the Mid-Atlantic area, he would set that aside to team with Thunderbolt to attempt to wrest the titles from the Minnesota Wrecking Crew.
Wahoo and T-bolt won the match by disqualification but, as we all know well, the titles can't change hands on DQ. The Anderson brothers retained the titles.
Much of the undercard on this show would be recently familiar to Mid-Atlantic fans, too. Roberto Soto, Bill Howard, Abe Jacobs, Charlie Fulton, and Don Kernodle loaded the Bell Auditorium card, and all had been Mid-Atlantic regulars over recent years.
Originally published October 19, 2015 on the Mid-Atlantic Gateway
And one more thing - - - we've spotted another blooper! In that April 30 Hampton, VA card up top, it appears there might be an inter-gender match scheduled - - Johnny Eagle facing MRS. X!
And thanks to Charlie G. who points out Cowboy Frankie LAN and Steve KOVADS on the same clipping. Those might be considered more typos than bloopers, but I sure missed them first pass through.
by Dick Bourne and Mark Eastridge Mid-Atlantic Gateway
It is certainly one of the most fascinating cases of a kayfabe violation in the territory wrestling days that you can imagine.
Our ongoing series about the 1977 Mid-Atlantic Wrestling/Georgia Wrestling talent exchange continues with this look at a big card of wrestling at the Bell Auditorium in Augusta, GA on May 9, 1977.
As we've described earlier in this series, Augusta was ground zero for some of the most interesting "mixed cards" of Mid-Atlantic and Georgia Championship Wrestling. The week before on the May 2nd card, all of the challengers for all three Georgia championships were from the Mid-Atlantic territory. So a week later, Augusta gets another treat: Mid-Atlantic area championships go on the line against Georgia challengers in Augusta.
UNITED STATES TITLE MATCH: BLACKJACK MULLIGAN vs. MR. WRESTLING II
Blackjack Mulligan brought his United States Heavyweight championship to Georgia for this one night to defend against Mr. Wrestling II, one of the most popular stars ever in the Georgia territory. As we discussed earlier in Part Two of this series, Mulligan was a big part of the talent exchange in defending the U.S. title on several occasions against Georgia's Thunderbolt Patterson when T-bolt made several visits to the Mid-Atlantic area over the spring of 1977.
NWA WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: GENE AND OLE ANDERSON vs. DINO BRAVO AND "MR. WRESTLING" TIM WOODS
The other main event that night saw the new NWA world tag team champions Gene and Ole Anderson, bringing those tag team titles back to Georgia from the Mid-Atlantic area, and defending their newly won belts against the mixed Mid-Atlantic/Georgia combination of visiting Dino Bravo and "Mr. Wrestling" Tim Woods.
There was only one problem: when the Augusta Chronicle newspaper ad announcing the new champions ran in the Sunday morning newspaper, the Anderson Brothers hadn't won the titles yet.
The Andersons would defeat Ric Flair and Greg Valentine for the NWA world tag titles that Sunday night, May, 8, 1977 in Charlotte, NC in a cage match with special referee Wahoo McDaniel. But the Augusta newspaper ad announcing the Andersons as new champs ran that Sunday morning.
If you believe in historical conspiracies, this ranks right up there with newspapers in the far east reporting Lyndon Johnson sworn in as president after John Kennedy's assassination before it happened. And they say wrestling is fixed. But I digress.
This was a relatively rare occurrence in wrestling, but sometimes the office inadvertently gave away results. But usually the mistake was made within the same territory. Rarely did one territory give away another territory's major title change.
It didn't really matter as no one in Augusta would have known that the Andersons were scheduled to face Flair and Valentine that Sunday night in Charlotte, unless they had just spent the weekend in the Charlotte area and might have seen local Charlotte TV wrestling. Who knows. It's an interesting little twist, though.
Bravo and Woods reunited their former championship combination that Monday night in Augusta. The two defeated the Andersons on television in 1976 for the world titles. It was on that night that Tim Woods put the white mask back on to become "Mr. Wrestling" once again. Bravo was in Georgia for only this one night to team with Woods, and was back in the Mid-Atlantic the next night in Columbia, SC challenging Blackjack Mulligan for the U.S. Title. However, Bravo, would move to Georgia full-time in another month or so.
Other tidbits:
● The Richard Blood in the opening match of the Augusta card was not Ricky Steamboat. It was Merced Solis, the wrestler later to be known to fans as Tito Santana. Solis wrestled under the ring name Richard Blood in both the Mid-Altlantic and Georgia areas in 1977 and 1978. Steamboat was in the middle of making history by upsetting Ric Flair during this general timeframe for the Mid-Atlantic TV title.
● The NWA world tag team titles themselves were in a way a part of a broader long-term exchange between the two territories. The title was created in early 1975 and the first champions were the Anderson Brothers. They left with the titles to work Georgia full-time in the fall of 1976, and during the balance of 1976, all of 1977, and early 1978 were engaged with Ric Flair and Greg Valentine back in the Mid-Atlantic area, and the two teams traded the titles back and forth. The Andersons put a little Georgia history on those belts, however, when Dusty Rhodes and Dick Slater won the belts for roughly a month in 1977.
● Quick recovery: In the Mid-Atlantic storyline, Ole Anderson is badly injured after the 5/8/77 Charlotte cage match when he is "stuff pile-drived" by Greg Valentine and Ric Flair. Ole sells the injury big time, having to be stretchered out of the ring, and the injury is used to explain why the Andersons aren't seen in the area for awhile. But of course, the next night, Ole is fully recovered in Augusta for the title defense against Mr. Wrestling and Dino Bravo. Ahh, you have to love the territory wrestling days.
In Part Five of this series, we'll take a look at #1 Paul Jones and his role in the Mid-Atlantic/Georgia talent exchange, which was taking place right at the same time of these Augusta shows. See you next time, and until then, so long for now.
Paul Jones and the Hollywood Blondes (Jerry Brown and Buddy Roberts) visit Augusta, GA on Valentine's Day night. It is the first in a series of Augusta cards to feature Mid-Atlantic talent in the coming months.
T-bolt travels from Georgia Championship Wrestling to make several challenges for the U.S. title and the NWA world tag team titles in the Mid-Atlantic area over several months.
Part Seven: Ric Flair Comes to Georgia (July - December 1977)
Ric Flair made nearly a dozen appearances in Georgia in 1977 while a Mid-Atlantic regular. He often times would bring the United States championship with him.
OLE ANDERSON BOOKING BOTH TERRITORIES
In
the fall of 1981 through the spring of 1982, Ole Anderson served as
booker for both Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling and Georgia
Championship Wrestling. Check out this complete Georgia wrestling program from November 14, 1981 featuring a large amount of talent appearing on Superstation TBS from the Mid-Atlantic area.
TOMMY RICH IN 1981
In 1981, Georgia Championship Wrestling's Tommy Rich made several appearances
in the Mid-Atlantic territory, including this one in Columbia SC where
local promoter Henry Marcus made clear that one of cable TV's top stars
was on his Township Auditorium card.
by Dick Bourne and Mark Eastridge Mid-Atlantic Gateway includes Vintage Classic Audio
As we've discussed in 7 earlier installments in this series, full time wrestlers from both the Mid-Atlantic territory and the Georgia territory made special appearances in each other's areas for one-night events.
While Augusta Georgia was "ground zero" for Georgia Championship Wrestling in this exchange, Georgia stars appeared in many different Mid-Atlantic towns during this time period including Richmond, Charlotte, and Greensboro, and others.
In September of 1976, reigning NWA world tag team champions the Anderson brothers left the Mid-Atlantic territory to go to Georgia, and they took their NWA world tag team title belts with them. A year later, they lost those belts to the unlikely pairing of Dusty Rhodes and Dick Slater on 9/23/77 in Atlanta.
Rhodes and Slater were scheduled to come to the Mid-Atlantic territory to defend their newly won titles on October 30 in Greensboro, and actually had sent in video taped interviews to promote the match to be aired in the local Greensboro TV market. Newspaper ads ran advertising Rhodes and Slater bringing their titles to Greensboro to face former champions Ric Flair and Greg Valentine.
But before Rhodes and Slater made it here with the belts for the 10/30 show, they lost them back to the Andersons on 10/14/77 in Atlanta. Greensboro newspaper ads, seen above, were revised to reflect the Andersons as new champions.
"Dusty Rhodes, you may call yourself 'the American Dream' but you're going up against the Dream Team!" - Greg Valentine
Here is rare vintage audio of Valentine and Flair welcoming Rhodes and Slater to town:
Vintage Audio: Greg Valentine and Ric Flair promote their scheduled match with Rhodes and Slater
I've always hated that Dusty Rhodes and Dick Slater never made it here with the tag team belts. It would have been an interesting match-up between them and Flair and Valentine - - to say the very least!
And it's nice to hear Greg Valentine use the term "Dream Team" - - that's the name of David Chappell's ongoing 8-part series about Mid-Atlantic Wrestling's "dream team" of the 1970s, Ric Flair and Greg Valentine.
Halloween Edition by Dick Bourne Mid-Atlantic Gateway
The recent spate of excellent quality uploads of old "Georgia Championship Wrestling" shows on YouTube had me fondly remembering Roddy Piper's one-year stint in Georgia and particularly his early feud with "Bullet" Bob Armstrong.
In the fall of 1981, Ole Anderson became booker for both the Mid-Atlantic and Georgia territories, something pretty unheard of in that time. One result of his having that dual responsibility was the cross-over of talent between the two promotions. This was yet another chapter in the long history of what I have dubbed the "talent exchange" or partnership between the Mid-Atlantic and Georgia territories that went back to the mid-1970s.
Gordon Solie and Roddy Piper, hosts of
"Georgia Championship Wrestling" on SuperStation WTBS
One of the most visible examples of this was Roddy Piper becoming the co-host of "Georgia Championship Wrestling" alongside Gordon Solie in late October of 1981. Piper proved to be the perfect bombastic and colorful compliment to Solie's rather dry style of calling matches. It's not clear what Solie must have first thought of Piper when he debuted alongside him on WTBS on Halloween evening of 1981, but he warmed up to him pretty quickly as there was great chemistry between the two and they became one of the top pro wrestling broadcasting duos in the country with broad exposure on the nationally televised Georgia program.
Piper was such a hit in the color commentary role that Ole Anderson also paired him with Bob Caudle on "Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling" a few months later. Piper was perhaps the only wrestler to ever be a color commentator on two top shows for two different promotions at the same time. It was this experience that would first get him noticed in that role and would later serve as a foundation for the groundbreaking "Piper's Pit" segments on WWF television shows in 1984.
Bob and Brad Armstrong
Along with his commentary duties in Georgia, Piper also would occasionally conduct interviews. In his first few months, he seemed particularly enamored of the father and son combination of Bob and Brad Armstrong, and his passive-aggressive confrontations with the two eventually led to fireworks between Piper and Bob Armstrong.
For several weeks in a row, Piper would interview the Armstrongs at ringside, complimenting the tag team prowess of the team, but also questioning their strategies and execution. He even went so far as to get personal with Bob, suggesting he was perhaps a bad father for occasionally letting his son take a beating in a match.
Bob, for his part, handled all of this masterfully in the slow build to the inevitable explosion with Piper, at first just just acting mildly annoyed at Piper's antics, usually brushing him off or ending the interviews before Piper was ready to end them, leaving the rowdy Scot occasionally flummoxed and at a loss for words.
Bob Armstrong was the perfect foil for Piper, aptly able to hold his own in a verbal joust with him, using his popular southern wit to confound the west coast bullying and arrogance of Piper. Armstrong was now looked at as one of the wise old veterans in the territory by the fans, and fans enjoyed watching Armstrong put Piper in his place over those early weeks.
But Piper was relentless. And as he turned the volume up on his criticism of the Armstrongs, it began to get under Bob Armstrong's skin. However, the two never touched for nearly three months.
That wild melee led to an actual match between the two at the Omni on Sunday, February 7. It was Piper's long awaited first match in Georgia and part of a big night at the Omni which included National Heavyweight Champion Tommy "Wildfire" Rich defend that title against former NWA world champion Harley Race.
There are different accounts as to the result of the February match. Most reports say it was a double DQ or a no-contest finish. The match would actually serve as a springboard to a progression of matches Piper would have over the next few months at the Omni, moving from one challenge up to the next. Following Armstrong, there was Tommy Rich and then Dick Slater. Others opponents down the line in 1982 for Piper included Dusty Rhodes, Ole Anderson, and Don Muraco.
Even though Piper moved on to other opponents in Atlanta, his feud with Bob Armstrong would continue outside the territory. Piper's only real role in Georgia was doing TV's with Gordon Solie on Saturday mornings, and matches on the Omni cards every three weeks or so. He didn't wrestle often on the house show circuit in Georgia because he was a full-time wrestler for Jim Crockett Promotions, and was actually booked out to Atlanta through the Charlotte Crockett office. In fact, through much of this time period Piper was Mid-Atlantic Heavyweight Champion, feuding first with Ricky Steamboat and then with Jack Brisco over that title belt.
THE PIPER/ARMSTRONG FEUD MOVES TO THE MID-ATLANTIC TERRITORY
Their feud was a quite unusual because it began in Georgia, but was largely carried out in the Mid-Atlantic territory, even though Armstrong never appeared in person on Mid-Atlantic television. The feud had incubated every Saturday on WTBS for nearly three months (November 1981 - January 1982) without the two ever touching.
Then soon after that one Atlanta match on 2/7/82, things moved directly to the Mid-Atlantic territory, where Piper was the reigning Mid-Atlantic Heavyweight Champion. But other than isolated matches in Norfolk and Greensboro, their war took place entirely in the city of Greenville, SC on Monday nights.
Over a two month period, beginning on February 22 and culminating on April 19, the two had five (5) different matches in the Greenville Memorial Auditorium.
2/22/82 - Mid-Atlantic title match (mid-card)
3/01/82 - No Disqualification match (semi-main)
3/22/82 - 2 out of 3 falls match (main event)
3/29/82 - Indian Strap match (main event)
4/19/82 - Canadian Lumberjack match (main event)
With Armstrong not appearing in person on any Mid-Atlantic TV shows, and only a few isolated clips shown from Georgia, it is astounding that Piper and Armstrong went for five events in Greenville, headlining the last three of them. it is a testament to the chemistry they had together and how well things clicked on the Georgia show, which was seen on cable channel WTBS in the Greenville market, although cable penetration in 1982 was far more limited than today.
Piper and Armstrong also headlined three shows in Cincinnati, OH, a city which featured talent from both Mid-Atlantic and Georgia promotions. The local promoter for the Cincy shows was Les Thatcher.
Piper and Armstrong also headlined three shows in Cincinnati, OH which were part of the Georgia Wrestling tours of Ohio and Michigan at that time. The local promoter for the Cincy shows was Les Thatcher, and lots of Mid-Atlantic talent was booked on those shows as well.
It was a wonderful feud and a great memory from that time where so much
talent was appearing in both territories simultaneously.
Originally published October 30, 2016 on the Mid-Atlantic Gateway.
Thanks to Brian Rogers for his help with these Greenville newspaper clippings.
It was the hot summer of 1977, and Gene and Ole Anderson dominated the tag team scene in the state of Georgia. At one point they held both the Georgia Tag Team titles and the NWA World Tag Team titles.
This screen capture from raw 16mm film footage seen in the Vault section of the WWE Network shows the Andersons wearing the World Tag Team title belts preparing for a defense against "Cowboy" Bill Watts and Thunderbolt Patterson at the Omni on June 24, 1977.
WWE Network
The Anderson Brothers were a month and a half removed from their big victory over Ric Flair and Greg Valentine in Charlotte, NC, on May 8, 1977 where they regained those World tag team titles in a famous cage match where Wahoo McDaniel was the special referee.
Later that fall in 1977, the Andersons would lose those titles to Dusty Rhodes and Dick Slater, but for only a month. The Andersons held those titles off and on in Georgia and the Mid-Atlantic area from 1975-1981.
The film footage, which dropped on the WWE Network on 2/28/19, is heavily edited raw footage of about 7 minutes in duration, and without sound. This clip comes out of the blue as it is believed that WWE doesn't own much Georgia footage, and the source of this material isn't known. It might have been added as part of their recognition of Black History Month, spotlighting Thunderbolt Patterson.
Not much wrestling in this match, as it was an all out, fists-a-flying, "pier six" brawl. Too bad there was no sound, as the crowd was surely into this match-up. Thunderbolt had been feuding with the Andersons for months with various partners over both the Georgia and World tag team titles. The finish to this match is hilarious, which eventually resulted in the Andersons keeping their titles. Check it out in the 1977 sub-section of the Vault on the WWE Network.
It's like Georgia Championship Wrestling decided to have a "Bring Your Mid-Atlantic Belt to Work" day.
This is a Gene Gordon photograph from 1977 or 1978 taken at the WTBS Techwood Drive studios. Ric Flair is seen here with the classic red crocodile leather U.S. belt. He was the reigning United States Champion for Jim Crockett Promotions, but was defending the title frequently in the Georgia territory during this time, most notably against Dick Slater and Thunderbolt Patterson.
Also seen in this photo appears to be the NWA Television championship belt (Crockett's TV title) lying on Gordon Solie's desk. I've never been sure what that was about, but still looking into it. (Have info? Contact us.)
Late Edit (4/24/18): That belt lying in front of U.S. Champ Ric Flair was the brand new Georgia T.V. Belt. It looked just like Crockett’s and was presented to champion Thunderbolt Patterson later in the program. That belt was worn by Austin Idol, Bob Armstrong, Blackjack Lanza, Terry Taylor, Terry Funk, and Tommy Rich just to name a few. The story goes that Terry Funk left the territory with it after losing the title to Steve Keirn and the two toned blue Georgia Jr. Heavyweight belt was used for the title until the beautiful one that Jake Roberts and Ronnie Garvin feuded over was introduced…one of my all-time favorites. Love your site!!! - Steve Hendrix, Marietta, GA
And as always, the Champ is "a vision of sartorial splendor", stylin' and profilin' in outstanding 1970s fashion!
